


Not to Me

by lesbianettes



Series: Orestes and Pylades [3]
Category: Chicago Med
Genre: Canon Divergent, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, One Shot, Stand Alone, implied emotional abuse, past connor/ava, past connor/robin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 17:33:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20178100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianettes/pseuds/lesbianettes
Summary: The past catches up to Ava and Robin





	Not to Me

As the sun comes up all over again on a new day, a fresh, clean slate of a day, Robin strokes Ava’s hair and thinks about what happened to them before they found each other. A lot of pain, to say it quickly. She’s free of that, here; laying in bed with her wife, the day beginning through the curtains with the usual Chicago bustle. Most mornings they would partake, but they both have today off, which means relaxation. Just the two of them.

Robin means to let Ava sleep, but as the sunlight streams in the window, she stirs and begins to wake up, first in her slowly moving limbs and then in her eyes blinking open, and then in the half-smile biting at her lips. She’s sleep, fatigue in her smile lines, and as she sits up she stretches her sleep-stiff joints until they crack. 

“Good morning, beautiful,” she says slowly, leaning forward to kiss Robin’s cheek, ever mindful of morning breath catching between them. “Been up long?”

She shakes her head and wraps her arms around Ava, drowning in the feeling of her warm skin, studded with goosebumps as the cold air outside the blankets rolls over her. They’ve got cleaning up to do before they shower; the stained sheets on the floor, the toy sitting atop them, and the sticky sheen of dried sweat over them both. They should’ve done all that last night, but they were tired, and sometimes sleep is better than being adults.

But first, they linger in bed together and allow their blood to start flowing, their limbs to wake up as their minds have begun to. She appreciates the soreness in her legs when she swings them over the side of the bed, the slight ache in her back. It’s familiar, but so different with the memory of last night and how much she loves Ava. With Connor, it was different. He didn’t do anything wrong, per se, but she just wasn’t as into it as he was. With Ava, it’s easier. Better.

“Getting up?”

Robin blinks rapidly and looks up. Somehow she didn’t notice Ava getting out of bed, but now she has an excuse to kiss against the bottom of her ribcage. “Yeah. I’ll start the laundry, you wash the…”

“The dick? You can say dick.”

“It’s not a…” Robin trails off. She’s an adult. “It’s not a dick. It’s your harness and attachment. I wouldn’t want it if it was a dick.”

Ava laughs and picks it up. “That’s fair. Meet me in the shower?”

She nods and gets up, gathering the sheets in her arms as she goes to put it in the wash, Ava’s gorgeous laugh still ringing in her ears like a chorus. Angelic, she thinks as she throws the wadded up sheets into the washer and stands on her toes to reach the detergent. Ava always puts it up high. They’re practically the same height, but Ava’s got an inch on her, and ridiculously long arms. It’s a game they play. More than once, she’s heard her girlfriend laugh in the other room when she finds, say, the coffee set on the very bottom shelf instead of its usual place.

As she measures the right amount to pour into the machine, she remembers other times doing soiled sheets the morning after, if they weren’t done right afterwards. Connor would stand behind her, his hands on her waist, and distract her. Or focus her. He spent a decent amount of time babying her, acting like she was incapable of thinking or doing for herself. It was out of love, but still. It hurt like nothing else has ever hurt. The way he treated her like she was his patient. Someone he was in charge of as opposed to in love with.

She’s thinking about Connor when she gets back to the master bath, where the strap is hung on one of the towel racks to dry and Ava is testing the water temperature with one outstretched hand. Robin admires the way her waist tapers in, and then curves out. The way the light sinks into her skin. The curls that appear in tangled, unwashed hair that Robin will run her hands through in a few moments. And still, she thinks about Connor, except it’s about Ava and Connor as opposed to him and herself. Connor probably helped Ava wash her hair too, before he fell on hard times and took it out with baseless, angry accusations. He probably watched her test the water with her right hand. He probably came up behind her and kissed her shoulder. 

Even when Ava turns around and reaches for her, she’s thinking about him. It must show on her face, because suddenly there are arms around her and she sinks into Ava’s embrace. 

“What was it this time?”

“The laundry.”

Ava hums and rubs Robin’s back, firm pressure, reassurance, love. “It’s not anything you did. Just like it wasn’t anything I did.”

“I know,” she says, and almost negates it. 

“I think about it too,” Ava admits. “It hurts, but that doesn’t mean we’re at fault.”

Robin smiles at her stiffly. “You believed him for a while. You thought you did those things. Sometimes you still do.”

There’ve been nights where they’ve both sat awake, Ava’s head in her lap, crying and asking why, why Connor accused her of those things, why he even thought of them, why she’s not good enough. They’re not easy questions to answer, and they’re questions which should not have to be asked. But before each other, he’s who they had, and his shortcomings bled into the two of them harshly for too long.

“Let’s shower,” Ava says instead of answering, and pulls Robin over to water, warm enough that it’s begun fogging the mirrors and adding humidity to the air. 

There’s no reason to say no, but the thoughts linger as they wash each other clean, detangle hair and replace dried sweat with the muted scent of rose. And there, under the water, they kiss more because they can, and Robin sighs into it when Ava cups her gently, a light pressure that’s just barely teasing. They won’t do more right now, still sleepy and no doubt on their way to a rough day buried in thoughts of the past, but it feels nice nonetheless, just as nice as the way Ava dries her hair for her when they step out of the water.

“I’ll put on new sheets and we can go back to sleep,” Robin says, wrapping her towel around her and leaving Ava with one last peck on the cheek before heading into the bedroom. They slept on top of the comforter last night, but they can’t do that forever. She goes for the nice ones Ava bought, high thread count and a soft olive green, and drags the duvet onto the floor so she can put the new sheets onto the mattress. It’s a little more exertive than she’d like, but hey, someone has to do it while Ava painstakingly combs her hair and does her thousand step skin care routine.

She can picture exactly what Ava’s doing in the mirror. Combing the very end of her hair as her favorite peel-mask for the morning after dries. She never remembers to wash her face after they have sex, and this makes up for it, she says. It leaves her skin smelling faintly of lemon and mint, which Robin loves more than she’s put to words. Lemon and mint smell like home now. 

By the time she’s made the bed- and pulled back the duvet to crawl under again- Ava emerges from the bathroom, makes a grab for a pair of boxers, and joins her. The sun is bright now, welcoming Robin wraps her arms around Ava. 

“They’re opening an investigation,” Ava says in the softest voice Robin’s ever heard from her. “Connor told Halstead he thinks I killed his father, and Halstead told his brother. Now they’re going to investigate me.”

“That’s crazy-”

“I saw Halstead’s brother taking statements from everyone when I left yesterday.”

More than anything, Robin wishes she knew how to fix it. She wishes she could undo the damage. She wishes that they found each other sooner. But she can only hold Ava tightly and stroke bare skin with the pad of her thumb.

“He’s just angry and grieving,” she says. “You didn’t do anything, so nothing bad will happen.”

“There’ll be rumors.”

She nods. “Probably. But it’s not your fault, remember? You didn’t do anything.”

Ava doesn’t respond, which is both good and bad. Nonetheless, Robin keeps holding her and knows that everything is going to turn out alright, no matter what.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @beelivia


End file.
